paid their debts, for that would be equivalent to perpetual imprisonment, but until they had sincerely forgiven their old friends for lending them money, and placed themselves in a situation to acquire new ones by a promise never to borrow any more.

A fourth description of beggars, not less pestilent in their visitations, are the fellows who are constantly coming to beg that you will lend them a book, which they will faithfully return in eight or ten days, for which you may substitute years, and be no nearer to the recovery of your property. It is above that period since some of my friends have begged the second volume of Tom Brown's Works, the first of Bayle's Dictionary, Phineas Fletcher's Purple Island, and various others whose absence creates many a "hiatus valde deflendus" in my bookshelves, which, like so many open mouths, cry aloud to heaven against the purloiners of odd volumes and the decimators of sets. Books are a sort of feræ naturæ to these poachers that have "nulla vestigia retrorsum ;" they pretend to have forgotten where they borrowed them, and then claim them as strays and waifs. You may know the number of a man's friends by the vacancies in his library, and if he be one of the best fellows in the world, his shelves will assuredly be empty. Possession is held to be nine points in law, but with friends of this class unlawful possession is the best of all titles, for print obliterates property, meum and tuum cannot be bound up in calf or morocco, and honour and honesty cease to be obligatory in all matters of odd volumes. Beggars of this quality might with great propriety be sent to the counting-houses of the different prisons and penitentiaries, where their literary abilities might be rendered available by employing them as book-keepers, a business in which they have already exhibited so much proficiency. One day for every octavo, two for a quarto, and three for every folio of which they could not give a satisfactory account, would probably be deemed an adequate punishment.

The last species of mendicants whom I should recommend to the new Suppression Society, and whom, judging by my own experience, I should pronounce the most unfortunate and unreasonable of any, are the young and old ladies, from the boarding-school Miss to the Dowager Blue Stocking, who, in the present rage for albums and autographs, ferret out all unfortunate writers, from the great Unknown, whom every body knows, down to the illustrious obscure whom nobody knows, and beg them-just to write a few lines for insertion in their repository. If they will even throw out baits to induce so mere a minnow as myself to nibble at a line, what must they do for the Tritons and Leviathans of literature! Friends, aunts, cousins, neighbours, all are put in requisition, and made successively bearers of the neat morocco-bound begging-book. Surely, Mr. Higginbotham, you will not refuse me when I know you granted the same favour to Miss Barnacles, Miss Scroggs, Mrs. Scribbleton, any many others. Besides it is so easy for you to compose a few stanzas.-Gadzooks! these folks seem to think one can write sense as fast as they talk nonsense—that poetry comes spontaneously to the mouth, as if we were born improvisatori, and could not help ourselves. I believe, however, that few will take the trouble to read that which has not occasioned some trouble to write; and even if their supposition were true, we have the authority of Dr. Johnson for declaring that no one likes to give away

that by which he lives :-" You, Sir," said he, turning to Thrale," would rather give away money than beer." And to come a begging of such impoverished wits as mine-Corpo di Bacco! it is robbing the Spittal-putting their hands in the poor-box-taking that "which nought enriches them, and makes me poor indeed”-doing their best to create a vacuum, which Nature abhors: and as to assuming that compliance costs nothing, this is the worst mendicity of all, for it is even begging the question. No, Mr. Editor, I cannot recommend to the new Society any extension of indulgence towards offenders of this class. The ladies, old and young, should be condemned to Bridewell, (not that I mean any play upon the word,) there to be dieted upon bread and water until they had completely filled one another's albums with poetry of their own composing; after which process I believe they might be turned loose upon society without danger of their resuming the trade of begging. Other mendicant nuisances occur to me, for whose suppression the proposed Institution would be held responsible; but I have filled my limits for the present, and shall therefore leave them to form the subject of a future communication.

VALKYRIUR SONG*.

THE Sea-King woke from the troubled sleep

Of a vision-haunted night,

And he look'd from his bark o'er the gloomy deep,
And counted the streaks of light;

For the red sun's earliest ray

Was to rouse his bands that day,

To the stormy joy of fight!

But the dreams of rest were still on earth,

And the silent stars on high,

And there waved not the smoke of one cabin-hearth

'Midst the quiet of the sky;

And along the twilight-bay

In their sleep the hamlets lay,

-For they knew not the Norse were nigh!

The Sea-King look'd o'er the tossing wave,

He turn'd to the dusky shore,

And there seem'd, through the arch of a tide-worn cave,
A gleam, as of snow, to pour.

And forth, in watery light,
Moved phantoms, dimly white,
Which the garb of woman wore.

Slowly they moved to the billow-side,

And the forms, as they grew more clear,

Seem'd each on a tall pale steed to ride,

And a cloudy crest to rear,

And to beckon with faint hand

From the dark and rocky strand,

And to point a gleaming spear!

* The Valkyriur, the Fatal Sisters, or Choosers of the Slain, in Northern Mytho

logy.

Then a stillness on his spirit fell,
Before th' unearthly train,

For he knew Valhalla's daughters well,
The Choosers of the Slain!

And a sudden-rising breeze
Bore across the moaning seas
To his ear, their lofty strain.

"There are songs in Odin's Hall,
For the brave, ere night to fall!
Doth the great sun hide his ray?
-He must bring a wrathful day!
Sleeps the falchion in its sheath?
-Swords must do the work of death!
Regner! Sea-King! thee we call!
-There is joy in Odin's Hall.

"At the feast and in the song
Thou shalt be remember'd long!
By the green Isles of the flood
Thou hast left thy track in blood!
On the earth and 'midst the sea,
There are those will speak of thee!
'Tis enough-the war-gods call!
-There is mead in Odin's Hall!

"Regner! tell thy fair-hair'd bride
She must slumber at thy side!
Tell the brother of thy breast*
Ev'n for him thy grave hath rest!
Tell the raven-steed which bore thee,
When the wild-wolf fled before thee,
He, too, with his lord must fall!
-There is room in Odin's Hall!

"Lo! the mighty sun looks forth!
Arm! thou leader of the north!
Lo! the mists of twilight fly!
We must vanish, thou must die!
By the sword, and by the spear,
By the hand that knows not fear,
Sea-King! nobly shalt thou fall!
-There is joy in Odin's Hall!"

There was arming heard on land and wave,
When afar the sunlight spread,

And the phantom-forms of the tide-worn cave

With the twilight mists were fled.—

But at eve, the kingly hand
Of the battle-axe and brand
Lay cold, on a pile of dead!

F. H.

* When a northern chief fell gloriously in battle, his obsequies were honoured with all possible magnificence. His arms, gold and silver, war-horse, domestic attendants, and whatever else he held most dear, were placed with him on the pile. His dependents and friends frequently made it a point of honour to die with their leader, in order to attend on his shade in the palace of Odin. And lastly, his wife was generally consumed with him on the same pile.-Mallet's Northern Antiquities.

BRITISH GALLERIES OF ART.NO. VI.

Dulwich College.*

THERE are several Teniers' here, and two or three that require particular mention. First, however, as a better opportunity may perhaps not occur, I will state what strikes me as being the distinguishing differences between this extraordinary artist, and his no less extraordinary living rival-Wilkie; for this is not one of those comparisons that are entitled to be ranked as "odious ;"-on the contrary, it can hardly fail to heighten our conception of the merits of both the subjects of it, if (as I think) it is calculated to illustrate those merits, and render them more obvious. It is a mistake to consider either of these artists as comic painters. They are nothing less. I do not recollect a joke in any picture by either of them. They are painters of human lifeat least of a certain class of it; and if the scenes that occur in and distinguish that class are of a smiling character-good: but the artists choose them, not because they bear that character generally-but because they are there. They are painters of truth;-and because such is the truth, they paint it-not because the truth is such. If the truth had been different, their pictures would have been different. Without knowing any thing of the personal character of either, I should judge them both, the one to have been, and the other to be, steady, serious, severe, pains-taking men-almost incapable of enjoying a joke, much less of inventing one. They are painters of facts and of things, not of sentiments, and ideas, and opinions; and as Nature is no joker, so they are none. Not that, if society or circumstances throw a joke in their way, they have any objection to pick it up; but they never think of going out of their way to find one. In fact they are conscientious to a fault; like Mr. Crabbe, the poet. They think that whatever is fit to be done, is fit to be painted; and their choice of subject is confined to a class, and to nothing else.

There is, however, this grand difference between Teniers and Wilkie ; -that the one is a painter of the real truth, and the other of the ideal: for Wilkie's pictures are as ideal, in the true sense of that term, as the finest of the antiques are ;-that is to say, they are as much founded in the absolute truth of Nature, yet as little to be seen there in point of fact. Every one of Teniers' scenes has happened; but not one of Wilkie's ever did or could happen; though there is no reason to be given why they should not. In short, the scenes of the one are absolutely true to nature, and consistent with it in all their parts; but the other's are nature itself.

Perhaps it may still farther illustrate the relative merits of these two extraordinary artists, if I say that, if Wilkie has more individual expression than Teniers, the latter has much more character;—that if the scenes of the former are more entertaining and exciting, those of the latter are more satisfying;-that if Wilkie's affect us more like a capital performance on the stage, Teniers' are felt and remembered more as actual scenes that have passed before us in real life;-that, in fact, Wilkie's are admirable as pictures, but that Teniers' are the things themselves. A foreigner who was acquainted with the works of Teniers

* Continued from page 557, vol. v.

at the time the Dutch boors were such as he represents them, and who went to visit the country with the remembrance of these works in his mind, must have felt at first as if he had got among a world created by Teniers' pencil, and animated by some strange magic. But this could never happen with respect to Wilkie's pictures. We might chance to fall in with one of Wilkie's figures,—for they must all either be or have been in existence; but we may look in vain for one of his pictures, any where but on his canvass-whereas Teniers' pictures might be seen every hour in the day, in every town and village in HolInd. And the reason of this difference is, simply, that the one is laborious and scrupulous to a degree in selecting, and consorting, and combining; while the other did not select at all. This, too, may in some measure account for the extraordinary facility of hand of the one, as compared with that of the other, and also the extraordinary number of his pictures that we meet with; for it might almost be said that, as Wilkie has painted nothing but what he has seen, so Teniers saw nothing but what he painted.

As I have no scruple in placing these two extraordinary artists on a general level in point of acquired skill as well as of natural power, I will add, that what Wilkie wants of the freedom and facility of touch of his dead rival, and the exquisite truth, purity, and transparency of colouring, he at least compensates for in his conception and execution of individual expression. The quantity of expression that he is capable of throwing into a face, without in the slightest degree overstepping the "modesty of nature," has never yet been equalled by any artist, living or dead, whose works are at present extant.

Apologizing, to those who think it necessary, for this short digression from our immediate subject, I now return to the second room of the Dulwich Gallery, and proceed to notice the remarkable pictures, nearly in the order in which they occur;-first pointing out the Chaff-cutter (156) as perhaps the finest (though not the most striking or ambitious) picture of Teniers in this collection. But all the others may be regarded as excellent examples, in their different ways, of his characteristic qualities, both of handling and of expression.-Nos. 106 and 118 strike me as being two of the very best pictures of Vandyke that I have ever seen, in the ideal style. The delineation of Nature-refined, but yet real nature was his forte; but still he has painted a few ideal works that are exceedingly fine--and these must be ranked among the number. 118-a Madonna and Child, is the best. It has all the glow of Rubens without his coarseness; or rather all the refinement of Guido without his coldness. The upturned gaze of the mother is intense. She is feeding her mind from above with high and holy thoughts. And the attitude and character of the child express the very nobility of Nature. It seems to have fed from the same fount with its divine mother, but through her medium-to have sucked in its mental as well as bodily life from her breast. There is a repetition of this picture at the Cleveland Gallery; but I think the one before us is the finer of the two. Here are also two other admirable works by the same master;-portraits of the Earl of Pembroke (163), and the Archduke Albert (196); both displaying that look of conventional nobility that no one could give like Vandyke. Immediately over the latter of these hangs a capital picture by Velasquez; full of truth and spirit (195),